ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business Analysts blog seeks to bring together all levels of project management and business analysis expertise, from diverse industries and perspectives, across business groups and information technology. Our goal is build successful collaboration and share content, best practices, techniques, and networking.

Want to contribute?

Monday, August 5, 2013

A project manager’s role on any project goes far beyond
task-related deliverables. Although the project manager must be able to manage
goals related to time, scope and cost, their work does not stop here since the project manager must also be able to manage
numerous issues, and be able to lead the people performing them.

Leadership involves the ability to influence people to take
actions toward completing a project. Projects contain components including scope,
cost, and time. For the project team to meet scope, cost, and time goals, one
must appreciate the impact of positive leadership. It is up to the project
manager to manage issues related to scope, cost, and time, as well as to lead
the team to successful completion of these goals. As the project manager
develops leadership skills and uses them to encourage and motivate the team, a
more positive environment will emerge.

According to Mark Bashrum, VP of Strategic Intelligence
& Corporate Marketing, ESI International, there are key project management (PM) trends that will
be prominent in 2013. So let’s dive in to number one, shall we?

According to Bashrum, organizations should focus on building
project leadership skills such as
communication, negotiation, organizational change management, and customer
relationship management. But, we don’t
think that is going to happen.

It’s unfortunate but true that most companies are more
comfortable focusing on hard project and program management skills than they
are at examining the underlying people skills required to deliver successful projects
and programs. If they don’t want the same year-over-year results, organizations
will need to seek out alternatives to develop leadership skills for their
project community.

“Hopefully we are wrong, and in 2013 we will see the shift.
We will keep our fingers crossed,” said Bashrum.

Check out the full
video below:

Amanda Ciccatelli,
Social Media Strategist at IIR USA in New York City, has a background in
digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business
strategy, marketing, and technology. She previously worked at Technology
Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and
feature stories in the tech industry. She can be reached
at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.